Divine Wind
by Rokesmith
Summary: Aboard his private cruise ship, a rich businessman arranges murders to order. Weiss must eliminate him and his hidden agent before the next victim suffers a fatal 'accident' – or they do.
1. The Scenic Route

**Divine Wind  
**Rokesmith

**Disclaimer:** Weiss Kreuz, its characters, indices etcetera belong to Takehito Koyasu, Kyoko Tsuchiya and Project Weiss. This fanfic was written for fun rather than profit and any resemblances to persons living or dead are purely coincidental.

**Author's Note:** This fanfic is inspired by Ian Fleming's James Bond novels. The story contains elements borrowed in various ways from various Bond novels, and the descriptive style attempts to mirror Fleming's own. The plot is original, but when I came up with it, it was rather more compact, and has since expanded since a writing style as flamboyant as Fleming's needed a flamboyant story to house it. As ever, I owe Laila a great debt for all her help and encouragement.

* * *

Chapter One: The Scenic Route

The wide, glittering carpet of the Tone River wove lazily across through the flatlands east of Tokyo towards the Pacific, patterns dancing across its surface reflecting the brilliant summer sun and flawlessly blue sky. Beside the river, matching every curve and meander, the thin grey concrete ribbon of Route 356 traced the same elegant line to the ocean.

Youji Kudou drove his Lotus Seven at sixty kilometres per hour listening to the wind in his ears, the rattle of the folded canvas roof behind him and the low grumble of the two litre Ford sidevalve engine. After the long dull slog north out of Tokyo earlier that afternoon, cruising down the long, half-empty highway was relaxing enough to let his mind drift, thinking about the natural beauty of the river on one side, the pockets of buildings he passed on the other and what waited for him at his destination and beyond. Every now and then he would have to break out of autopilot as he came up to a slower moving car, change down a gear and listen to the engine's rumble rise to a roar as he shot past.

He had just done this to overtake a packed Toyota and slowed down again when he heard a howl in the vacant lane to his left and a dark blue Mazda MX-5 with its top down slid around the Toyota and his own car and kept going without slowing down. Youji had only a moment to see the driver, and had the impression of long black hair billowing in the wind, tanned skin, eyes hidden by sunglasses and peach lips that twitched into a smile for a second before the Mazda passed.

Youji hesitated for an instant. He had somewhere to be, but there was no harm in having a little fun along the way, and there had been too much of a challenge in the look she had given him to resist. He so rarely had the chance to really stretch the Seven, and an MX-5 – based on the Seven's big sister, the Lotus Élan – would be a worthy test.

He put his foot down and the Seven responded instantly, quickly cutting the distance between the two cars. He was close enough to see a flash in the Mazda's mirror as the girl looked behind her, then the car accelerated again. He kept up both of them far gleefully exceeding the speed limit as they raced down the quiet stretch of the highway between Sakae Town and Katori City, braking violently whenever they saw a sign for a speed camera and then dropping several gears to accelerate again once they were safely past. Whenever her way was blocked, the girl would weave impatiently back and forth behind them, waiting for even the narrowest of openings and then blasting through it, leaving Youji to follow in her wake. He never tried to overtake her; she was enjoying being chased and Youji was gentleman enough to let her.

Every exit they came to, Youji expected her to indicate and swerve off, ending their game, but she never did until they were finally both forced to slow down by the dense traffic near the junction with Route 51. With the Seven's driver's seat so close to the road it was almost impossible to keep track of the Mazda, and soon it was lost amongst the traffic moving slowly through Katori. Youji kept looking, but there was no sign of the car or the girl by the time the road cleared and he could speed up again.

He drove on, feeling discontented, but instinctively knowing it was not over. With this driving him on, he kept his speed as far above the limit as he dared – Kritiker would not approve of him being caught speeding on the way to a mission – and was rewarded after he passed Omigawa when he caught sight of the blue Mazda ahead of him again. He had to work hard to catch her, really taking advantage of the Seven's legendary speed and agility to slip through gaps that no other car could manage, working the clutch and the gear stick until his arm and leg ached, but metre by metre he made up the distance between them.

He was finally behind her again as the road swung back to join the river on the edge of Choshi and suddenly understood they were heading for the same destination. This made him smile as both cars settled down into a cruise that took them along the Tone River estuary to where the Inubosaki Peninsular reached out into the deep blue Pacific.

With the end of the highway in sight, Youji looked down at the dashboard of the Seven and realised with a burst of embarrassment that the petrol gauge needle was resting against the bottom of the dial. He grinned to himself; he would have made a great impression running out of fuel on the highway chasing a girl he'd never seen before.

He pulled into a welcoming petrol station and exchanged smiles with the attendant. As she refilled the car, he got out to stretch his aching legs, then turned as the Mazda stopped behind him and Youji got his first good look at the driver. She was tall, with long, elegant limbs and, without her sunglasses, bold brown eyes that swept over him. She was wearing a simple blue sleeveless top and a knee-length white patterned skirt.

"I love driving like that, but it does burn fuel," she said.

Youji smiled. "Especially from a small tank. Thank you for making the journey so exciting."

She returned the smile. "I should be thanking you. It's good to be chased from time to time. You obviously like your cars fast."

"My women too."

The girl tilted her head back and laughed. "You are a brave man."

"Call me Youji."

"Karin. Karin Ousama."

Youji handed some money to the attendant. "That's an interesting name."

"I'm glad you like it," Karin said.

She turned away to pay for her petrol. As she did so, Youji wrote the name and address of the Keisei Hotel on one of his cards and held it out to her. She looked back at him, and at the card, then reached out and took it without a word. Then the Mazda's engine roared and she was gone. Youji gave his attendant one last smile, then got back into the Seven drove towards the ocean.

He parked the car at the Keisei Hotel, took his overnight bag off of the passenger seat and walked onto the polished brown wood of the lobby. The chill inside was artificial after the cool wind in the car, but Youji didn't let that bother him. He was escorted up to his room; white walls, ephemeral curtains and patterned sheets on the double bed. Looking out of one window, Youji could see the tall, white lighthouse which looked just like something from a British postcard because it had been designed by an architect imported Scotland. Out of the other window he looked across the wide beach and tasted the salt blowing on the breeze. He settled on the beach view, watching the people enjoying the sand and sea as he smoked a cigarette.

When he had finished, Youji walked up and down the room a few times, stretching after his long drive. Then he took a short shower and changed into a white cotton polo shirt and black trousers before taking his collapsible Polaroid instant camera out of the bag along with a sketch book and a few pencils. He walked along the beach towards the lighthouse. The afternoon was starting to cool and the tourists who had come for a day trips were starting to pack up. He paused every now and then to take a picture, sometimes of families, sometimes of crowds and sometimes of individuals.

He walked around the lighthouse, taking the occasional picture, along with several pictures facing north to the big stone walls of the docks at the mouth of the river. Then he picked his spot, looked up at the sun, at his watch, and then started to draw. He spent nearly an hour and several cigarettes sketching the lighthouse over and over again, each time with more attention to detail, taking in the two buildings at the base, the three windows rising up the tower, the railing and the crystalline window at the top.

As the sun started to set behind him, a shadow fell across him, and he looked up to see Karin silhouetted against the sunset.

"You are a man of many talents," she said, looking at the sketches.

"Everyone has to have a hobby," Youji replied.

"This wasn't one I expected from someone who worked in haulage," Karin said, reading the card he had given her again.

"I'm full of surprises," Youji said. "I'm sure you are too. Is this just a chance meeting or is it fate?"

Karin shook her head. "Neither. I decided to accept your invitation. I called at your hotel and someone there was kind enough to tell me you went this way. Did you have any plans for the evening?"

"Only hopes," Youji told her. "No certainties. I was planning to have dinner at my hotel. Would you like to join me?"

"I'd love to."

Before they left, Youji asked her to stand still, then walked back and forth in front of her for a minute, selecting the perfect angle to take a picture of her with her back to the setting sun. Then they strolled back to the hotel and into the tidy bright restaurant.

"I'll have the grilled salmon and green vegetables," Youji said.

"I think I'll have that as well," Karin agreed. "And could we have a bottle of white wine with it?"

The restaurant was busy, so the food arrived while they were still on introductory small talk about hobbies, lighthouses, holidays and Youji answered a few simple questions about his cover profession and found out Karin was a junior journalist. The white wine was cool and crisp and the grilled salmon was soft enough to melt on the tongue. The combination, they both agreed, was exceptional.

"How long will you be staying here, Youji?" Karin asked.

"Just for the night. Tomorrow I'm catching a ship."

"Me too!" Karin exclaimed. "You're sailing on the _Divine Wind_?" Youji nodded. "This must be fate. Does your company work with Matsumoto-san's?"

"We've performed services for him before," Youji answered. "My boss thinks it will generate more business. He thinks I'm the best person to represent us."

Karin smiled. "He made a good choice. My editor wanted a write up of the trips they take and sent me because he can afford to lose me for a couple of weeks and I'm not a well known reporter. If I do well, this assignment might be the first of many."

"I doubt anything interesting will happen on this trip," Youji said. "But you never know."

They finished the meal with green tea ice cream for Youji and mochi for Karin and then split the bill.

"Thank you for a lovely evening, Youji," Karin said. "I'm sorry to cut it short, but I have a lot to do to prepare for tomorrow. I'll see you onboard."

Youji nodded. "I'll make sure you do. Goodnight, Karin."

Karin stepped forward, stretched and gave him a slow, gentle kiss. "A taste of victory, Youji," she whispered. "Keep up the chase. Goodnight."

He watched her walk away into the night, waiting until she was lost in the dark before lighting a cigarette and turning back to his room. He had lied about a lot of things that night, he knew the cruise of the _Divine Wind_ would be very eventful. He sat and watched the water glow white under the moon, thinking about the mission that would start aboard the ship tomorrow. What he did not let himself think about was what had happened the last time a girl had got involved in a mission.


	2. Holiday Assignment

Chapter Two: Holiday Assignment

Two weeks earlier, summer had some suddenly to Tokyo in a blazing heatwave that seemed to be trying to roast the people in the streets. The brilliant white sun shone through the Koneko's big glass windows, and by late afternoon the temperature had risen so high the four young men who worked there felt like they were trying to sell flowers from an oven. The situation was made worse by the fact that the heat seemed to have robbed even their regular customers of the desire to shop, so they were left with nothing to do but sit in the still heat and wait until they could at last close for the day.

The only one of them who was moving was Ken, slowly circling the room, misting the leaves to keep them from drying out. Aya leaned against the wall in the only patch of shade, staring at the door as if he could will himself not to feel the heat. Omi sat at the table with his maths homework; there was no reason for him to be there rather than in his room, but no one asked if it was out of solidarity or some kind of mental test. Youji stretched out in his chair with his eyes closed, staring at the ceiling and contemplating asking Ken to mist him during his next lap.

Then the shop bell rang and a shadow blotted out the door. Youji recognised Manx from the ankles up. She stood casually in the doorway, holding her coat over her shoulder, the sleeves of her blouse rolled up and the top few buttons undone to expose the pale skin at the base of her neck and hint at what lay beneath.

"Are you keeping cool, boys?" she asked.

"We're trying our best, as you can see," Youji replied. "But it's a hot day. Can we offer you a drink?"

"Yes, Manx." Omi was on his feet. "Would you like some water?"

Manx licked her lips. "I would. Thank you, Omi."

Aya led the way down to the basement and took his place by the stairs. Youji followed Manx down the steps, enjoying the view all the way. Ken did one last hurried bit of misting, then went into the back room to help Omi carry five glasses of water down.

The cool water was a momentary distraction, washing away the taste of the basement's warm, stale air. Then they all focussed on the TV it switched on and they saw the same summer sunlight blazing through venetian blinds, all but blotting out the figure of Persia.

"Men of Weiss, this is the shipping magnate Takashi Matsumoto. He lives aboard his private ship the _Divine Wind_ and once a year invites several hundred guests aboard for a cruise around Japan. He uses these cruises to assassinate selected guests under the cover of accidents and uses the payment to fund smuggling weapons to Japanese criminals. Kritiker has information that on his next cruise he has been paid to kill Makoto Yamada, a state prosecutor, in order to cause his current case to collapse. You must eliminate the assassin before they can kill Yamada, along with Matsumoto, his assistant, Fuyuki Ota, and the ship's captain, Kenta Nakano. Men of Weiss, deny these dark beasts their tomorrows!"

The screen went black and Manx flipped the lights back on. "Do you accept the mission?" When she received four confirmations, she opened the folder she had brought with her. "Matsumoto is fifty-eight years old and is the chairman of Matsumoto Shipping. Seven years ago he suffered a minor stroke and since then has become more and more reclusive, living on the _Divine Wind_ and attending fewer and fewer engagements on land except his company's anniversary review meeting."

The picture in the file reinforced the impression of the image that had flashed up on the video. Matsumoto looked older than his fifty-eight years, his eyes deep set in his skull, his cheeks sunken and his thin hair entirely grey. Another photo showed how gaunt he was, standing outside his company headquarters in an expensive black suit that tried its best to disguise how skeletal he had become, balancing awkwardly on the ornamental cane in his right hand. Standing a respectful distance behind him was Ota; as on the tape, his black hair was meticulously arranged and his face was expressionless.

"What about the ship?"

Manx took another photo out of the folder. It had been taken from halfway across Tokyo bay and showed a squat, solid cruise ship. The hull was pristine white, marred only by rows of portholes, and rose smoothly until it separated into three blocks, the upper two lined by windows. These ran two thirds of the way down the ship, leaving a wide flat area at the bow and interrupted at the stern by the single enormous chimney pumping out smoke from the ship's enormous diesel engine.

"The _Divine Wind_ was built in the early seventies as a cruise ship by one of the big European liner companies. It had a chequered career, was sold several times, caught fire twice and was eventually sold for scrap more than ten years ago. Matsumoto bought it and spent years and hundreds of millions of yen converting it into a modern resort. He rents cabins out to those who can pay for cruises, holidays and even conferences. For the past four years he has held a special cruise where he invites 300 guests aboard and entertains them for free."

"Does he live onboard all the time?" Omi asked.

Manx nodded. "As far as we know, he has only stepped on shore once in the last eighteen months."

"Like Howard Hughes at the Desert Inn," Youji remarked. "I wonder if he has a copy of _Ice Station Zebra_."

"He still seems to possess all his faculties," Aya said.

"So if he invites all his guests, how are we going to get on?" Ken demanded.

"The ship requires almost two hundred temporary staff for each cruise," Manx replied.

Ken sighed. "Great. That's me then. What about the others?"

"One of us should stay on shore," Omi said. "To talk to Kritiker and monitor the ship in case something goes wrong. That should probably be me. According to this, the ship puts into ports all around Japan. I can make contact with the others then."

"What about the lawyer?" Aya asked. "Someone should watch him."

"Yamada is currently preparing for his next case in his summer home outside Sendai," Manx told him. "He and several of his junior associates will board the ship when it docks there. Kritiker has made arrangements for one of you to join that entourage."

"I'll do it," Aya said.

"Good luck," Ken muttered. "We're assassins, not bodyguards. We haven't had any practice keeping people alive."

"Ken has a point," Youji added. "Especially since you don't seem to know anything about whoever's going to try to kill Yamada."

"Persia has every confidence in you," Manx replied. "You will be expecting an attack. They will not be expecting you. But if you're not up to it, just say so."

No one spoke until Youji lit a cigarette and asked, "So what about me? Or am I going to be taking Omi on his road trip following the boat?"

Manx took another photo from the file. Youji looked at it and blinked. The man in the picture was in his mid-twenties, tall, thin and with wavy brown hair hanging past his ears.

"There is a certain resemblance, Youji-kun," Omi said when Youji showed him the picture.

"You don't have a brother, do you?" Ken asked suspiciously.

Youji shook his head. "Of course not, Ken. I'm one of a kind."

"This is Ichiro Goto," Manx explained. "A junior member of Minato Transport, which is the front for one of the organisations which distributes the weapons smuggled into Japan by Matsumoto. He has also been invited on the cruise."

"So we persuade him to relinquish his ticket and I go instead?" Youji asked.

Manx's lips twitched into a smile. "It will be slightly more complicated than that, Balinese."

* * *

The next night, Youji and Ken stood outside the Garden Bar, just off Dogen-zaka Street. It was one of the trendiest bars in Shibuya. Through the huge plate-glass windows they could see a wide room whose walls, floor and ceiling were made entirely of polished brown wood. Every few metres along the wall were tall bamboos, and there were decorative plants on the tables and along the bar.

"Why the hell are we going in there?" Ken demanded. "We could have just got drunk in the shop."

"But then we'd miss out on the chance to be charged double for drinks," Youji remarked.

"I still don't get why we need to do this at all."

Youji sighed. "Because, Ken, we need to capture this smuggler so he can't warn Matsumoto that I'm not him, and in a way that no one else knows either. Kritiker can't break into his house or just arrange for him to be arrested because that's too public. So we have to do it this way. I'll go in and get him outside and you keep an eye on me and back me up, okay?"

Ken tugged at the collar of his shirt. "Let's just get this over with."

Youji strolled into the bar, instantly blending in with the customers in their stylishly minimalist suits and dresses. All the clothes and jewellery were a very expensive kind of simplicity, the kind that doesn't need to show off because it assumes everyone already knows. He lit a cigarette and drifted leisurely in the direction of the bar, leaning against it next to a woman in a high-necked but backless dress who gave him a brief, appraising glance and then moved on.

"A martini, please," he said to the barman. "Gordon's gin, Lillet Blanc, stirred and served with an olive."

He sipped the martini, looked around, and saw Goto. The man was standing by one of the tables, bolt upright, holding what looked like a scotch on the rocks. His eyes swept over the women in the room, ignoring the men as though they were not even there. Every time a woman got close enough, he would lean over and speak a few quick words to her before she moved on.

For twenty minutes, Youji moved around the bar overhearing snatches of conversation and watching everyone, but especially Goto. Goto didn't seem to notice the looks. He also did not seem to notice Ken sitting two tables behind him, sulkily drinking an overpriced American beer.

When Goto started to feel the effects of the alcohol and headed towards the toilets, barging past someone as he went, Youji waited till he had left the bar, counted to ten and then followed. The two bathrooms were in a short, stone-walled corridor with the door to the bar at one end and an emergency exit at the other. Youji double checked to make sure opening the door would not set off an alarm, then put a cigarette between his lips, took out his lighter and waited.

A few minutes later, when Goto came out of the door, Youji clicked the cigarette lighter several times and then called, "Hey! Hey, man!"

Goto turned and looked Youji over. "Yeah?"

"Can you lend me a match?" Youji asked hopefully. "My lighter's busted again."

"Sure."

Goto took a book of matches out of his pocket and struck one as he walked down the corridor. Youji smiled gratefully and lean forward to accept the light. Then Goto grabbed him by the collar of his coat and slammed him backwards against the emergency exit. The door burst open and they kept going, Goto driving Youji back into the wall of the alley outside.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

Youji didn't bother to answer. He drove his knee up into Goto's stomach. The man gasped, gulped at air and stumbled back. Youji stepped forward and hit him in the side of the head, knocking him sideways. Goto roared and kicked out, sweeping Youji's legs out from under him and then managed to get an arm around Youji's neck, pulling him upwards. As his head jerked up and he felt his windpipe being crushed, Youji desperately rammed his elbow into Goto's nose. His opponent let go, stumbled backwards and fell onto his hands and knees as blood trickled from his nose onto his expensive shirt. Youji staggered to his feet as Goto tried to push himself up, reaching out. Youji kicked him hard in the face, knocking over onto his side, where he lay without moving.

Massaging his aching neck, Youji took a deep, uncomfortable breath and lit a cigarette, just as Ken burst through the fire door.

"Where the hell were you?"

"You were supposed to give me a signal!" Ken exclaimed. "I didn't know you were going to ambush him right now. You should have said. I thought you were just taking a piss!"

"Oh," Youji muttered. "My mistake."

"Is he alright?" Ken gestured to the semiconscious Goto.

"He'll live," Youji said.

Two people were walking down the alley towards them, the older man with the scar on one side of his face smiling to himself, the younger one looking very serious. Youji tried not to look closely at either of them, it was better that way, but he thought the younger one was the man who Goto had barged past on his way to the toilets.

The older one leaned over the now-moaning heap on the ground and rifled through his pockets, producing a wallet and a small bag containing white powder. "Ichiro Goto," he said cheerfully, "I'm arresting you for possession of cocaine." He looked up and tossed the wallet to Youji. "You'll need that."

"Thanks."

The man gave Youji a brief bow. "Good luck," he said. "And bon voyage."


	3. All Aboard

Three: All Aboard

The morning he was due to go aboard the _Divine Wind_, Youji woke up at nine a.m., feeling hot and uncomfortable despite the sea breeze blowing through the window. He got up and spent a few minutes under a cold shower before putting on a thin blue shirt, loose trousers and a pair of light, black slip-on shoes.

Once he was dressed, Youji found his light grey summer jacket and checked the contents of the pockets to make sure they still exactly replicated what they had found in Goto's coat. There was a wallet with an identical group of credit cards, nearly fifty thousand yen in folded notes, business cards with Youji's name on them which perfectly doubled Goto's cards from Minato Transport, and the exquisitely-decorated numbered invitation to go aboard the cruise ship.

Having made sure everything was back in place and all his clothes were repacked, Youji went downstairs and took his time over a pleasant breakfast of omelette and coffee. He left a generous tip from Goto's money before checking out – leaving another tip – and collecting the Seven.

He took his time driving along the coast, past the lighthouse and towards the docks at the mouth of the Tone River where he had been told the _Divine Wind_ would moor. When it came in sight he had to stop the car to appreciate it. None of the pictures they'd been shown had prepared him for how big it was, a huge white shape looming over the docks. An extended pontoon reached out from the land towards it, and as Youji watched, a large, solid American saloon was hoisted off it on a small crane and delivered carefully into a turntable car park in the liner's lower cargo bays. He had known the ship could transport cars, but it had not occurred to him until that moment what that would actually involve.

He pulled up the gate where he was greeted by a man wearing a white suit shirt, but with the collar undone and the black tie loosened. "May I have your name, sir?" he asked.

"Youji Kudou," Youji said, handing over his invitation. "Representing Minato Transport."

"One moment, sir." The man went back into a small booth where he spoke a few words to a man with a laptop.

Youji couldn't help but tense up, and he forced himself to relax. He'd been there, looking over Omi's shoulder, as the boy hacked into the passenger database while the _Divine Wind_ was docked in Tokyo taking on crew and its first group of passengers. He'd seen Omi replace Goto's details with his own and then leave the system without a trace as he'd done so many times before, but anything could have happened since then. The guard seemed to be taking forever, and Youji was going through his options for what to do if this didn't work when the man came back over.

"Thank you, Kudou-san," he said. "If you park your car over there, the valet will give you a ticket and once you're aboard, someone show you to your cabin."

"Thank you very much."

He stayed to watch the Seven swayed out over the ocean and didn't turn away until it was safely inside the cargo hold. With his most precious possession stowed away, he walked up the ramp to the passenger entrance. A young man in a uniform that would not have looked out of place on a White Star liner beckoned him across the short hop between the ramp and the hatch and pointed him down the wood-panelled corridor. Walking down it, Youji passed several junctions, but kept following the signs labelled 'Lobby', and the sound of conversation until the corridor opened up into a wide, circular hall.

Directly in front of him, in the centre of the lobby, was a brass column more than three metres tall with a four-faced ornamental clock at the summit. The floor around it was white marble with kanji characters in black stone at the entrance to the corridors that led off from it. The walls were lined with decorative mirrors, extending the lobby and the people inside it out into infinity. Two wide, red-carpeted staircases led in and out, one rising to a balcony level at the stern end, the other dropping down out of sight forward. There were about twenty guests wandering through, some talking to each other, some alone, as well as the uniformed stewards, some of whom were on their way somewhere and some were standing to attention on duty.

A steward stopped standing straight and made his way over and bowed. "Welcome aboard, Kudou-san." Youji wondered how the man knew who he was until he turned and Youji saw the radio receiver in his ear. "If you'll follow me, I'll show you to your cabin."

"Lead the way," Youji said.

"This is the main lobby, Kudou-san," the steward explained. "Most of our guests find it makes a useful point to help them get their bearings. Up those stairs is the entertainment level with the bar, casino and leisure rooms. Down here are the restaurants and the main hall. All the guest quarters are forward of here, the crew stay in the stern, so you won't need to go there."

"Where is Matsumoto-san's cabin?" Youji asked as he was led into an elevator.

The steward hesitated. "Matsumoto-san, his personal staff and the captain have private cabins directly above the lobby, but guests are not permitted inside."

"I wanted to thank Matsumoto-san personally as soon as possible," Youji said.

"He often comes down for dinner, Kudou-san," the steward told him. "I'm sure you will have the opportunity then."

Two floors down in the elevator, then the steward led Youji left then right then left again to the wooden door of his cabin. Inside, Youji found a wide room that same mixture of brass and wooden panelling, well lit by the sunlight coming through the two large portholes. There was a bed at one end, on the far side of a collapsible bulkhead wall, along with a chest of drawers and a wardrobe next to the door to the white-tiled bathroom. At the other end was a living area with a white sofa, a desk against the wall with a leather chair in front of it and a small television mounted on the wall.

"Is there anything I can do, Kudou-san?" the steward asked.

"Would it be possible for me to have a vase of flowers every other day?"

The steward nodded. "Certainly, Kudou-san. If you require anything else, please call housekeeping and they will arrange it."

Once the door was shut, Youji wandered around the cabin, taking everything in, from the phone on the desk to the ash tray by the bed to the fact that the windows only opened half way. He found the luggage that had been sent aboard in Tokyo beside the wardrobe and discovered the cases were empty. The moment of confusion ended when he opened the wardrobe itself and discovered that as part of the service someone had hung up his shirts, jackets and trousers and even arranged his socks and underwear in the draws.

Inspecting his suit jacket, he found the note he had been expecting on the inside pocket: _I'm on bar duty after it opens. Why the hell do you write your name in your underpants?_

Youji reflected that Ken would have found out eventually as he pulled a small laptop out of the bottom of his overnight bag, powered it up and plugged it into the spare phone socket. The ship had a connection to the internet, and Omi had decided that using that to communicate would be less risky than using the radios, whose transmissions could be traced even if they could not be understood. To keep the e-mails secure, Youji took a device that looked like a pocket calculator from his pocket and switched it on. The device used a complicated mathematical process designed by Omi to generate a random nine-digit number every half hour. Youji wrote his e-mail and then entered the number which, by a process only Omi understood, turned the message into gibberish. The clever part was that because the devices all used the same process, whoever received the message just had to enter the time it was sent into theirs, and it would work backwards to produce exactly the same number used to encrypt them message, which the computer would then use to decode it.

_All aboard safely, everything's fine so far. Heard from Ken but haven't seen him yet. See you soon. Youji._

He sent the message to an e-mail address Omi had created in Minato Shipping and then sat back to smoke a cigarette and ponder his next move. When he had finished it, he got up and walked around the room, leaving several small items from his luggage in certain positions on furniture and next to where he had stored his possessions. Then he opened the door and went out of the cabin, locking it behind him.

Matsumoto was obviously keen that no one would get lost on his ship. There were diagrams at every corridor junctions helpfully pointing out where they were and the layout of the immediate area. Youji looked carefully at the first one he came across, memorising the location of his cabin like anyone else who had just come aboard. Looking at the map he started forcing himself to think in nautical terms: the right side of the ship was starboard, the left was port, the back was the stern and the front was the bow.

With this done, he picked a random direction – towards the bow – and started wandering through the passenger section. As far as he could tell, all the cabins were about the same size as his own, and from the occasional glimpse through half-open doors they were decorated in a fairly similar way. The corridors were wide enough that Youji could pass someone – with a friendly smile if they were another guest and a polite nod if they were one of the crew – without either party having to flatten themselves against the bulkhead.

After spending half an hour walking through different passenger corridors trying to get some sense of their layout, he headed back to one of the elevators. Each one contained a labelled map of the ship. The cargo holds and engine room at the bottom with the crew quarters above them, then the guest decks, then the entertainment levels. Areas which were inaccessible to guests had been helpfully marked in red. Youji spent a moment memorising this map, then smiled to himself and pressed the button for the deck above where the true VIP guests were staying.

The elevator doors opened onto a wide, sumptuously-carpeted hallway. They also opened to the unamused expression on the face of a dark suited bodyguard.

"This isn't the lobby," Youji said in surprise. "I must have pushed the wrong button. I'm sorry."

Back in the lobby, he moved through the small crowd up the staircase to the entertainment level and into the sunlight streaming through the big square windows. The big glass doors of the bar were shut, as were the ones to the casino. The next door along was also closed, but looking at the list of film names and times beside it, Youji realised that this must be a cinema.

"_My Neighbour_ _Totoro_," Youji read. "Better than _Titanic_ or _The Poseidon Adventure_. Maybe he will show _Ice Station Zebra_ after all."

There were still a few more doors on that level. One of them was subtly disguised in the bulkhead between the casino and the cinema. There was a small panel next to the outline of the door which looked, to Youji, the size, shape and position someone would conceal a keypad. This must be the private elevator up to Matsumoto's quarters.

Two matching doors on each side of the level opened out onto a narrow gangway around the outside of the ship just above the level of the lifeboats, but the forward part of the leisure deck was taken up by a single large room. It was entirely white, lined with big windows that went all the way forward, and felt cavernous from the doorway. Chairs were clustered around simple tables where people were playing chess, mah-jong, Go, and a dozen other board games. At the back were larger, more comfortable chairs where other passengers could simply sit, read, listen to music or just look out of the window. Beside it, Youji saw a sign for an arcade, but had seen enough of those in Tokyo to know what they looked like.

His tour of the upper deck complete, Youji walked back down the stairs, down out of the lobby and through the dining section. Directly behind the stairs was a proper, wooden-floored dining hall with rows and rows of tables, all pointing towards one at the very back with chairs on the far side where Matsumoto, the captain and their honoured guests could sit. Following the corridor, Youji passed three smaller restaurants each decorated in a different style: one traditional, one western and one a mix of other Asian cultures. Beyond the restaurants was a double row of shops aimed at providing for any of the passengers' occasional needs including a pharmacy and a hair salon. Finally, at the far end, he came to an open area with two symmetrical bars where crewmembers in white t-shirts made drinks for those lounging on the sun deck beyond the glass doors.

Youji pushed his sunglasses up and stepped out into the bright sunlight. As the wind blew his hair into his eyes he looked around the sun deck. He threaded his way through two rows of deck chairs up to a 25 metre pool were a group of men were swimming casually up and down while women in various kinds of revealing swimsuits watched them from the side.

Ordinarily, Youji might well have gone for a drink, pulled up a deckchair and joined them, but he felt a vibration through his feet and saw the horizon start to move. Walking forward, he passed the pool and reached the point of the ship's bow. Leaning on the rail, he watched the huge ship turn away from the docks and the headland and then aim itself at the fine line where the sky met the sea. A hundred and fifty metres behind Youji, at the stern, the twin brass propellers began to spin in unison and the tremor through his feet increased, smoke billowed from the chimney behind him and water frothed as the hull began to cut through the water. Youji let out a breath, pushed his hair out of his eyes and stood in silence as the _Divine Wind_ headed out to sea.


	4. Very Important People

Chapter Four: Very Important People

Dinner was served at eight, announced throughout the ship by the sound of a heavy gong being played through the intercom system. Youji put on a dark blue suit and made his way to the lobby, merging into a crowd of guests, all of them dressed for dinner. The men were wearing suits of all colours and cuts, from ones that were brighter and flamboyant to those which were so subtly simple they had to be worth a fortune. The women were styled so differently he only caught glimpses of them as they passed: dresses, kimonos; straight hair, plaits, buns; necklaces, earrings, bracelets; all the colours of the rainbow surmounted by precious stones that glittered and glowed in the dancing lights.

The stewards – now dressed in white jackets with the ship's name in kanji on the buttons – opened the doors to the dining hall and led Youji to his seat. There he found polished silver cutlery and a small card with his name printed on it, and wondered how the seating arrangements had chosen. He swept his head around, looking for Karin, but saw no sign of her. Perhaps that was for the best; he had spent most of the day trying very hard not to look for her.

To keep him distracted, he found himself sitting between two women. One was Kiyomi Fujiyama, an elegant woman in her forties wearing a pale green kimono that matched her sparkling eyes. On his other side was a girl in a tight black dress with delicate lips and big brown eyes, but she was deeply involved in an intense non-verbal conversation with the well-built man sitting opposite her.

"Can I get you a drink, sir?" one of the waiters asked.

Youji smiled and gestured to Kiyomi. "Ladies first."

Kiyomi smiled and bowed her head in acknowledgement. "Thank you... Kudou-san. A Bellini cocktail please."

"A glass of champagne," Youji said. "What does your husband drink, Fujiyama-san?"

Her smile broadened. "Only Calpis water while discussing business." She gestured to the man next to her, who gave her a brief smile and then went back to the conversation with his neighbour. "Tonight is an excellent opportunity to discuss business."

"If I were your husband," Youji said, "you would have my full attention all the time."

She laughed delicately. "Please call me Kiyomi."

Before Youji could repay the courtesy, there was a commotion in the dining hall entrance. The guests nearest the doors were standing, and Youji's table joined them. Soon everyone in the hall was standing as the guests of honour entered, led by Captain Nakano. Matsumoto came next, crossing the hall slowly but steadily, barely learning on the cane for support and being followed at a discreet distance by Ota. Then came the VIPs, six men in perfectly tailored black suits who walked calmly through the hall towards the high table. Two caught Youji's eye instantly: the first was an unassuming man with glasses who was smiling broadly, probably because had had an attractive woman on each arm, one in red and the other in gold; the other unusual VIP was a girl with short brown hair who didn't look any older than the ones who came into the Koneko, lagging behind the main group because she was having trouble moving in high heels and her loose formal dress.

He tilted his head questioningly. "Does her mother know that she's out?"

Kiyomi smiled. "I've been told she's a pop star who's going to be the next big thing. Not that it helps me remember her name."

"I think I've seen her on a friend of mine's CDs," Youji remarked.

"Perhaps you can get an autograph for your friend," she suggested.

One of the interchangeable waiters interrupted their conversation to give them their drinks and place their dinner in front of them. Youji had never tasted anything quite like the soup, the mix of spices was barely present yet blended together to make it unique. The soybeans were sweet all the way through. The baked sea bass was even better than the salmon he had eaten with Karin; it was firm but tender, and each bite offered just a hint of lime. Neither Youji or Kiyomi spoke as they ate, they just took their time to enjoy the meal.

"You would have to go to the finest restaurants in Tokyo to have a meal like that," Kiyomi said once they were finished. "Believe me, I have."

"I'll have to thank make sure I thank Matsumoto-san for the food if I get the chance to meet him personally," Youji replied. "Is that possible?"

Kiyomi tilted her head towards the high table. "Unless you are very persuasive or very lucky, Youji, you may be disappointed. Matsumoto-san keeps to himself during the day and since we left Tokyo I have only seen him leave his cabin for dinner."

"But he can't stay there all the time."

"Perhaps he can." Kiyomi shrugged. "From what I hear he wants for little, and what he does want he has brought to him. Perhaps he will become more sociable as the voyage continues, but I doubt it. Anyway, he is always escorted by his bodyguard Ota-san. If you do meet him, you will be lucky to do any more than bow."

"Then," Youji said, "I'll have to be lucky."

She laughed again. "Yes. You will. Do you think you are a man who, as the film said, makes his own luck?"

Youji shook his head. "No, Kiyomi. But I am a man who knows what to leave to chance."

The conversation in the dining room died again as Matsumoto rose from his chair and then, followed by the other VIPs, walked out of the dining room. Youji let Kiyomi talk to her husband for a moment as he watched the first people start trickling out after them.

"I'm going back to my room," she told him once she turned back. "I admit I'm tempted to stay up, but I'm sure you'll understand that my husband may object. I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening, Youji. Thank you very much for the pleasant conversation."

Youji bowed. "The pleasure was mine."

He sat back down and sipped another glass of champagne, watching her walk away. At the doors of the dining room she turned and gave him a last smile before following her husband out.

He waited until he was sure they were gone then stood, adjusted his suit, and walked out of the dining hall. The guests were going their separate ways. Some of them were heading back to their rooms or to the late show at the cinema, but most headed up the stairs and into the bar. It was a spacious room with dark green walls covered in images depicting nautical scenes and a carpet the colour of the ocean. The centrepiece was the rosewood ring of the bar itself, providing three hundred and sixty degrees of service to the patrons. Inside the ring was a huge cylindrical mirror with shelves running all the way around displaying ornamental bottles. There was a large double set of wooden doors on the starboard side that led to the walkway around the outside of the ship, and a pair of sumptuous red curtains through which lay the casino.

Youji stood admiring the room, taking note of the people at the tables and in the booths at the side while he waited for a drink. "Gin and tonic please."

With the drink in his hand, he strolled into the casino. It was smaller than he expected, dominated by two long tables, one for craps and the other for roulette. They were close enough that the stewards acting as dealers stood back to back at either end. The other tables were around the edges, each being attended by their own stewards. To Youji's surprise, most of the people were not gathered around the centre table, they were watching one of the kidney-shaped card tables to his left.

Looking closer, he saw why. The VIP who'd taken the two girls to dinner was sitting at one side of the table with his ladies at each shoulder. The one in red was a long-legged Japanese girl with jet black hair piled high on her head and a sharp, lithe figure. The other's brown hair hung free over her bare shoulders. She was, Youji guessed, a mix of Japanese and something more exotic, possibly Latin American: her skin was darker and her lips, eyes and bosom were much fuller than her companion's. It was more than enough to make any man happy, even if he wasn't winning at baccarat.

The unassuming man was taking his turn as the dealer, and he was on a roll. It was, Youji knew, a game of almost pure chance. Two players, one who dealt, each received two cards and could, if they wanted, ask for a third, and the one closest to nine (with tens and face cards having a value of zero and every other card holding its numerical value) won. Each time, the money wagered doubled, and it was rising very quickly as the dealer beat four players in a row and a silence fell over the table.

"The bet is now two hundred and twenty thousand yen," the steward announced.

The table stayed silent. That was a lot of money for one night, even for these people. Youji, contrary to some expectations, never really enjoyed gambling. He understood that it wasn't really about the money or about beating the odds, it was about paying for an adrenaline rush. He got enough of that risking his life without having to risk his income as well. That said, he had been on the boat for almost a day and nobody knew who he was. It was time to make an impression.

He put his drink down, dropped into the vacated seat opposite the dealer and said, "I'm in."

The man smiled. "That's a relief. I was starting to worry everyone had left their courage back on shore."

"It's a lot of money for so early in the voyage," Youji observed as he waited for his chips.

"Only if you lose it." The man's smile grew. "Allow me to introduce you to my friends. This is Luisa and Miyuki. I'm Hirofumi Takatori."

Youji lit a cigarette. "My name is Youji Kudou."

Hirofumi nodded respectfully. "Our audience is getting restless, Kudou-san. Shall we give them a show then?"

With practiced ease he slipped two cards out of the shoe and slid them across the green baize towards Youji. Youji lowered his eyes from Hirofumi and his girls to look at them. A king and a one. Not his best start.

"Card."

Hirofumi slipped another card across the table, then looked at his own. He flipped them up without hesitation.

"Kudou-san has eight. Takatori-san has nine."

"Bad luck," Hirofumi said.

Youji shrugged. "They can put it on my bill." That earned him a laugh from the small audience. "Perhaps luck really is a lady, and you seem to have me beaten there too."

Hirofumi looked up at the two girls. "I'm very lucky there. They're actresses, Kudou-san."

"I should have guessed." Youji gave each girl a nod. "I can see just where their talents lie."

He had to stop admiring the differences in the girls' smiles to look back down at the new pair of cards in front of him. A three and a two. The odds of Baccarat dictated that with five the chances of another card making his hand better were exactly the same as them making it worse. It was up to the player and luck.

"Card."

A nine. That brought him all the way around and back to four. Hirofumi took another card and flipped all three of his over. A three, a one and a two.

"The bet is now eight hundred and eighty thousand yen."

Youji kept his face level. He thought very seriously about getting up from the table and calling it a night. That bet represented all of his Kritiker funds for the whole cruise. He felt Hirofumi watching him across the table, almost looking sad at the thought that his fun was about to end. Youji let out a slow stream of smoke and smiled. One way or another, they'd remember him now.

"Once more."

There was a cheer from around him. It was only then that he realised how big the crowd around the table had become. Hirofumi's girls were leaning forward too, their perfectly manicured nails digging into the shoulders of his shirt. Youji took a moment to wonder if they were there as a distraction to other players, especially as Luisa ran her tongue across her lips in anticipation.

Youji wondered if he detected the tiniest tremor in Hirofumi's hands as he slid the cards across the table before drawing his own. Youji turned them just a fraction and kept his face level as he looked down at the dull black faces of the king of clubs and the jack of spades.

"Card."

He didn't look at Hirofumi, or the girls, or the audience, just at the card. He flipped it over without letting himself hesitate, and strangely, felt no sense of triumph as the nine of hearts looked up at him.

Hirofumi sat back in his chair. He made a strange sort of noise and fumbled a cigarette out a silver case and lit it with a gold lighter, then took a deep drag. In front of him were three queens. In poker, it could have been a winning hand. In this game, it was nothing but zero.

"Well," he said finally, "Well done, Kudou-san."

There was no malice in his voice at all, just surprise. He pushed his pile of chips over to Youji and then stood up. For the first time since the hand started, Youji smiled. He was sure that Luisa and Miyuki would be very comforting.

"Thank you, Kudou-san," Hirofumi said. "It's been a long time since I had that much fun. It was definitely worth it."

Youji stood and bowed. "We should do it again. Though perhaps we could try a less expensive game?"

Hirofumi returned the bow and grinned. "I'm sure we'll think of something. I look forward to our next meeting, Kudou-san."

He looped his arms around the girls and they strolled away, just as if he hadn't just lost nearly a hundred thousand yen. Youji smiled and sat down again. For the sake of appearances he played for another half hour, and was strangely relieved that his one instant of luck seemed to be isolated. He lost more than he won and after three similarly brave attempts at victory had ended in him parting with a third of his winnings, decided that enough was enough. If there was such a thing as luck, he decided, it wasn't to be frittered away playing cards, it was to be carefully saved until it was needed the most.

Even if left to himself, he would still have gone out on deck. The night air was refreshingly chilly and the taste of the salt breeze was a change to the smoke of bespoke cigarettes. He lit one of his own and strolled over to where one of the bar staff was making a very good job of taking a cigarette break out of the wind. Except the cigarette between his lips wasn't lit.

"It would be a better act if you'd actually light the thing," Youji said.

"Go to hell, Kudou," Ken snatched the cigarette out of his mouth. "You'd be amazed what you can get away with if you say you're going out for a smoke but I'm not basing the act on President Clinton."

"Personally, I've always been a fan of the guy," Youji remarked. "Him and JFK."

"Can you tell me about your heroes some time I'm not freezing to death?" Ken responded. "I've been out here for ten minutes while you were playing cards with your new best friend. The only way you could have made yourself more obvious is if you tried stealing one of his girls while you were at it."

Youji shook his head. "It's called 'hiding in plain sight', Ken. If I can make everyone pay attention to me, what are the odds anyone will see what you're getting up to? Or Aya, when he arrives? And don't worry about Hirofumi Takatori. Most of the money he lost was other people's, that's how the game works, and even if he did he doesn't care about money, all he cares about is having a good time."

"Let's hope so," Ken said. "Because we're not going to have a good time."

"What have you found out?"

Ken took a deep breath. "It's taken me a week to get the hang of everything that's going on around here and I wish I hadn't. We should just start the music from that movie and get on with it. Matsumoto never goes anywhere by himself, that guy Ota's always right behind him, and neither of them ever leave their private deck if they can help it. Everything's brought up to them. The only other person who lives on that deck is the captain, and when he's not there he's usually being followed around by one of the junior officers to take his coffee order or whatever. Someone told me that later on the trip he throws parties up there for his VIPs but other than that and the occasional escorted visitor, the only person who can go up there at any time is Matsumoto's doctor. He's a full on heart expert who spends most of his time handing out seasickness tablets to guests."

"I guess it's too much to hope that he'll drop of his own accord."

"Not likely. I've seen the sick bay. You could treat a major traffic accident in there, but I checked and only the doctor and his nurse – his _male _nurse, Youji – have access to the medicines so we couldn't switch the guy's heart pills for breath mints or something."

Youji shrugged and stubbed out his cigarette. "What's keeping all this security going?"

"Oh, the security's the fun part," Ken growled. "All the doors in restricted areas have keypads by them and everyone's issued with a code. Stewards have four digit codes, the crew have five digits and Matsumoto and his group have six digits."

"And I guess you need a six digit code to get into Matsumoto's cabin."

"Good guess. Not only does it take a certain level code to open a certain door, but the computer records whose code it was and when it was used, even if the door doesn't open and the security chief can look up all this stuff at the touch of a button. Most of the time it, and all the other stuff on the ship, is run by computer from the mainframe."

"Good job finding all this out, Ken. I'm impressed."

Ken gave a sour laugh. "Are you kidding? They told us most of this during the induction."

Youji laughed with him. "Did they happen to mention any good news?"

"Just that there aren't really any security cameras around," Ken told him. "Just in the really sensitive areas."

"Good thing Matsumoto isn't one of those voyeuristic targets," Youji said. "Do you have a plan?"

"Sort of," Ken replied. "Before Aya gets here we need to break into the computer mainframe and put a tap into the system for Omi."

"Okay," Youji nodded. "When do we do that?"

Ken looked up at him. "Not sure yet. Need another day to find out when's best to do it. You work on your tan and see if there are any more ways to attract attention and I'll let you know." He looked at his watch. "Now my break's long over so see you round, Youji."

He left Youji in the sea breeze, suddenly feeling cold. He gave Ken five minutes and then went back in through a different door, still shivering. Making his way back to his room he considered that Ken hadn't mentioned anything about their fourth target, which meant he probably knew absolutely nothing. There were hundreds of people on the ship, and the assassin probably hadn't even come aboard yet.

He pushed the thoughts aside, searching for more pleasant ones as he made his way back to his room. They had several days till Aya and Yamada arrived, time enough to make some progress.

As he got into bed his thoughts left the mission entirely. He found himself seeing Karin in front of his closed eyes, and drifting off to sleep tasting her on his lips.

_To be continued..._


	5. Business and Pleasure

Chapter Five: Business and Pleasure

Youji woke up at ten to nine the next morning with the sea breeze pleasantly cool against his skin. He only lay in bed for a moment, looking through the window at the perfectly empty blue sky, then got out up and jogged on the spot for a moment to warm himself up. He stretched, then dropped to the deck and did press-ups until the muscles in his arms burned. With that done, he did a long sequence of exercises worthy of a dancer, stretching his arms, legs and back.

Relaxing afterwards, feeling his muscles and tendons tingling, Youji smoked a cigarette and contemplated the bewildering array of choice available for room service breakfasts. With the cigarette finished, he rang down to the kitchen to order natto with soy sauce and a raw quail's egg and some coffee. Youji had to admit their timing was perfect: breakfast arrived just as he finished buttoning his shirt after his shower.

He ate his breakfast slowly, taking the time to enjoy it. He found a single solitary cloud floating across the blue sky and followed it until it disappeared around the edge of his window while he decided how to spend the day. There was, he concluded, no rush; Ken's window of opportunity would certainly not be during the day and they would not reach Sendai until the day after tomorrow. With that in mind, the best way to blend in and learn the rhythms of the ship was to behave as though he were just a man on holiday.

After the excitement of the previous few days and the intensity of the mission planning before that, he resolved to take a slow morning strolled up to the leisure deck. It was ten in the morning, and he thought he was unlikely to meet any of the people he'd see in the casino the previous night there, a thought which made him strangely happy. A quick glance around the long room showed that he was right: he was the youngest person there by some way, but he received nods and smiles from everyone who was not too engrossed in their activities to look up.

The room was empty enough that there were still plenty of options for entertainment. Youji selected a box of mah-jong tiles and a table out of the sun. He patiently stacked the tiles in a turtle formation and then started to play a solitaire game. Matching the unblocked tile pairs and removing them from the pattern gave him plenty of time to watch and listen to the other people in nearby. He was directly opposite another man wearing an expensive silk shirt with rolled-up sleeves who was also playing solitaire and every now and then would look up, nod in solidarity, and return to his own game. To his left two women in their forties, both wearing heavy wedding rings, were exchanging information about their lives as they played koi-koi, talking like old friends even though they couldn't have known each other for more than a few days. Two men in their sixties matched wits over a Go board, hardly speaking a word to each other. Finally, just on the edge of his vision, a married couple in their fifties played chess, each watching the other intently, hardly looking at the pieces.

Youji was glad he had the interesting company, because it didn't take him long to realise he was desperately out of practice at mah-jong. After being ground to a halt with a quarter of his tiles still stubbornly unpaired for the third time in a row, he decided that enough was enough. The game had been more engrossing than he thought; he glanced at his watch and realised it was half past eleven as he returned to his room where he swapped his shorts for swimming trunks and his shoes for sandals, collected a bottle of sun cream, a towel and a book and headed down to the swimming pool at the bow.

With the sun bright in the sky but the heat softened by the cool ocean breeze, it was a popular place to be. There were three people in the pool itself, doing slow, lazy lengths, while men and women from their twenties to forties reclined on bright white sun chairs and loungers, some talking, some reading, some apparently sleeping. Youji let himself enjoy the sight of so many women dressed for hot weather, his gaze lingering on bare legs, tight fabric and glimpses of more intimate flesh. Across the pool, Hirofumi Takatori looked up from rubbing sun lotion into the cream skin of Miyuki's back, and smiled. In the corner the young pop star whose name Youji still couldn't remember relaxed in a plain t-shirt, shorts, and oversized sunglasses, lying on her stomach and casually kicking her legs in the air while sipping fruit juice.

Youji arranged a lounger a little way back from the pool with a table next to it for a glass of Calpis water. He pushed his sunglasses down over his eyes and relaxed, enjoying the heat and the familiar story, but not getting so engrossed in the diversions of pearl fishing in the Caribbean with beautiful blondes with broken noses that he did not watch the group around the pool. With the sunglasses preventing anyone from seeing what his eyes were focused on and the book as a shield, he was able to take in the behaviour of everyone who came and went from the pool so some part of his mind could catalogue it and store it in case it was needed later.

However, even with the cool Pacific breeze, the heat made it hard to keep up that level of split concentration for too long. After an hour, his attention was starting to flag and the urge to just close his eyes and sleep was getting harder to resist. Rather than give in he removed his sunglasses, unbuttoned his shirt, kicked off his sandals and dived into the pool. The cold water gave his skin a pleasant bite as he slid through it in long, slow strokes. He'd done a lot of swimming back in Tokyo to escape the summer heat, so he found the rhythm for his crawl quickly, then moved on to a few lengths of backstroke.

He was just thinking of doing some more crawl when he arrived at one end of the pool and found a pair of pretty ankles waiting for him. Looking up through the shadow cast by their owner, he saw Karin smiling down at him, wearing a short sleeved blue and white striped polo shirt, a tartan skirt which billowed tantalisingly around her knees, and a wide, white sunhat with a blue ribbon above the brim.

"Kudou-san."

"Ousama-san. You still haven't told me where you got such an interesting name from."

She knelt down, still smiling. "You still haven't asked, but then should I really expect more from a man who'd go swimming in a pool when there's a perfectly good ocean all around him?"

"I'm sure if you asked Matsumoto-san nicely he'd stop the ship for you to take a dip. I don't know if he'd do it for me though."

Apparently unaware that the position of her skirt was giving Youji a perfect view of her long, shapely legs, Karin put on an expression of mock shock. "Are you suggesting I should use female wiles to get my way? The very thought!"

The delighted quirk at the edges of her open mouth and the invitation in her eyes made Youji very tempted to pull her into the pool, but he managed to resist and instead said, "Come to lunch with me."

Half an hour later, Youji had showered and was sitting opposite Karin on the sun deck between the bar and the pool eating the tonkatsu sandwiches they had discovered were available as bar food.

"How is your article going?" Youji asked.

Karin sipped her Mitsuya Cider. "I haven't really started it yet." She leant closer over the table and her voice dropped. "To be honest, my editor doesn't want an article on a cruise ship. People can read the travel section for that. I'm keeping my eyes open in case something happens."

"You want a big story," Youji said in the same conspiratorial tone.

"Yes." Karin's eyes glittered with excitement. "All these rich, well-known people together in one place for weeks. Something's bound to happen. And when it does I'm going to be right here. I mean, that was Ami Suzuki by the pool there. Did you see her?"

Youji shrugged. "I was wondering who she was. Unless she'd started singing _Love__the__Island_I think I'd have gone on wondering."

"And I saw Hirofumi Takatori there," Karin went on. "His father is probably going to be the next Prime Minister. Unfortunately, 'Hirofumi Takatori seen in the company of beautiful young lady' isn't a new headline. Although I did hear a rumour he was in the casino last night gambling."

"Have you heard any other rumours about these cruises?" Youji inquired.

She shook her head sadly. "No. And that's the weird part. Like I said, you'd think something interesting would happen from time to time. It seems like what happens on the _Divine__Wind_ stays on the _Divine__Wind_. Until now, anyway."

"Maybe the crew would know," Youji suggested.

"I'd thought of that," Karin said. "But they won't talk to me if they know I'm a journalist will they?"

"Well, it's a long trip. If I find any that would, I'll let you know."

She gave him a sweet smile. "Thanks, Youji. So what's it like being in shipping?"

In the weeks before the mission, while Omi had been preparing for the long-distance operation, Aya had been skimming first year law textbooks and Ken had been practicing his cocktails, Youji had been reading up on Japanese commercial shipping. Omi had been obliging enough to hack into the personnel records of Minato Shipping half a dozen other transport companies around the country to provide Youji with a list of names and personalities to memorise. He'd also found out as much as he could about the regulations, procedures and equipment required for shipping everything from timber to livestock and everything else that Minato's records indicated the company handled. Finally, he had spent every spare moment in between touring the Port of Tokyo, which was not nearly enough time to get his head around a port as sprawling and populous as a small city.

Of course, that was just to preserve his cover. Youji didn't tell Karin any of that. Instead he spun stories he'd created around his research, stories of keeping port officials entertained, wining and dining cargo ship owners, negotiating for crew salaries and – for the highlight – personally accompanying the Chief Executive of the company on a flight to San Francisco to renegotiate docking charges. In return, he listened to her talk about her journalism career so far: the year spent writing obituaries that she admitted she found strangely enjoyable, chasing down small community stories that only ever made it into the paper if there was an unforeseen gap, and her current job collecting and confirming or disproving celebrity gossip for the entertainment section editors. She hoped one day to have a staff job in the entertainment and celebrity section, but told Youji that her closest brush to fame so far was asking Mieko Harada three questions at the premier of _Begging__For__Love_ when the scheduled reviewer called in sick.

They lost the afternoon to the conversation, which ended when Karin looked at her watch and exclaimed, "Is it really four o'clock?"

Youji checked his watch. "It is."

"I'm sorry, Youji, I have to go," Karin told him. "I haven't made my notes for the day yet, I have to keep track of everyone I see in case I forget and I need it later. I have some people I need to look up and I still haven't finished writing my first impressions of the ship. Perhaps I'll see you after dinner?"

With that she was gone. Youji sat at the table, finishing his drink and wondering if she really was that forgetful or whether it was just playing hard to get to keep him interested. If it was, he was happy to let her have her fun.

But back in his room, he forced his thoughts of her away as he was reminded of the mission. His ashtray was on top of the chest of drawers. Youji closed the door behind him, quietly slid the bolt across and then checked the inside of the wardrobe door for the note he knew would be there. It was a folded napkin on which Ken had written simply _Tonight,__ 2__a.m._

* * *

Youji didn't see Karin after dinner. He caught a brief glimpse of her in the crowd beforehand but ducked out of sight. Once he'd eaten, he went straight back to his room and allowed the good food and the warm evening to lull him into a doze until midnight. After that, feeling his hands prickling with the excitement of imminent action, he had nothing to do but read quietly in the low light and smoke half a packet of cigarettes. He tried not to think about his very limited understanding of computers and total lack of knowledge of the deck where the mainframe was probably located since he had no way of getting down there without drawing attention to himself. Tonight he was entirely dependent on Ken.

It was a few minutes before two that he heard the knock-knock, pause, knock-knock on the door. Ken slipped into the room, still in his waiter's uniform. Without speaking, he handed Youji a plastic water bottle half full of what smelled like vodka. Youji carefully spilled some on his rumpled shirt, then took a mouthful, swilled it around his mouth and then swallowed it.

"Right. If anyone asks, I'm drunk and lost and you're helping me."

"Yeah, yeah," Ken said. "Right, follow me."

He led Youji towards the lifts but turned off at the last minute down a side corridor, at the end of which was a heavy door that Ken pulled open. Beyond it was a flight of stairs that looked considerably less well-kept than the rest of the ship.

"What's this?" Youji whispered.

"Emergency stairs," Ken replied. "They go all the way through the ship and the laws say they have to be open all the time in case we hit an iceberg or something and the lifts break. Didn't you read that safety thing in your cabin?"

"I skimmed it."

They emerged onto the crew quarters' deck. The corridors were a lot more sparse here, minimal decor and a plain blue carpet beneath their feet. Youji kept track of the turns as Ken led him down to a simple wooden door with a circular porthole in it and a keypad next to it. Youji looked through the window but could see nothing but darkness.

When he looked back, Ken had produced a device from inside his coat and attached it to the keypad. There was a small, flat display at the top, which silently scrolled through a sequence of numbers until it hit on the master access code left in the system by the manufacturer (a lot easier, Omi had once told him, than trying to guess personal access codes).

Inside, the room was cramped. The only illumination was provided by dim blinking lights, from which Youji could guess at the shapes of three computers arranged around something large and black that was as tall as he was. Just as he started wondering where all the wires were, Youji glanced up and, in the half-light, could just see clusters of cables weaving across the ceiling like thick black snakes.

The extra light was coming from the computer screen Ken had turned on. "There's no one on duty here from one till six," he explained quickly. "If they do a security sweep, just get behind the mainframe and keep quiet."

He pulled off his coat and hung it over the back of the chair. Youji thought that was to give him more freedom to move until he realised that Ken had a black harness slung around his shoulders and under his arms, keeping a collection of pouches pressed as close to his body as it could. He produced several objects from them that Youji couldn't see clearly, and though he was holding a pen torch he didn't want to use it in case someone saw the light through the window.

"I've got to get into the system," Ken said as he started to type, "get rid of the record of us coming and then plant the program Omi gave me." He tapped the disk resting next to the keyboard. "You'll need this." Without looking, he passed Youji an old Gameboy.

"To do what?" Youji asked. "Play _Super__Mario_ while you work?"

"No." Ken stopped typing long enough to grab two of the indistinct objects, make a quick motion that attached one to the other, press something and then hand it to Youji.

It was a telephone. A telephone with a much larger aerial than it would ordinarily have needed. And it was now calling someone.

"A sat-phone?" Youji hissed. "Why didn't you tell me you had a sat-phone?"

"Didn't need to."

There was a buzz from the phone and a familiar voice said, "Hello?"

"Omi?"

"Oh, hello, Youji-kun. Has Ken-kun explained everything?"

"No," Youji growled. "He hasn't."

"Oh, okay. There probably wasn't time. Are you in the mainframe room and do you have the Gameboy?"

"Yes."

"Could you push the 'A' and 'B' buttons at once?"

Youji did so, and wasn't surprised to see the shell of the Gameboy pop open. Most of the space inside was taken up by a heavy black box with a lot of complicated writing on it and a collection of wires.

"What is this, Omi?"

"It's the smallest one-gigabyte computer memory backup module available," Omi said as though it was obvious. "Ken-kun is giving me a way to access the computer systems aboard the ship remotely so I can hack into them, but I can't copy the files out onto my computer. There are too many and someone would notice. But because all the computer files on the ship are stored in this mainframe it's got to be able to back them up in case something happens, so all you have to do is plug that in and I can trick the computer into backing them up onto that drive instead."

"Okay," Youji nodded. "I get it now. Tell me what to do."

"Okay, Youji-kun. Now, this is an IBM ESA-390 mainframe, so if you go around the back there should be a handle and you can just open it like a cupboard."

Youji moved cautiously around the back of the room and, once he was sure the mainframe was between him and the door, lit the penlight as brightly as he dared. The shadows flickered for a moment and, in the new light, Youji thought the mainframe looked a lot like nothing more than a very sinister wardrobe. Or a large plastic coffin.

He found the handle quickly enough, and slowly opened the back to reveal what looked like miles and miles of plastic-coated multicoloured wires joining interchangeable layers of plastic and silicon together.

"Now, Youji-kun, don't touch the wires, you don't have to worry about any of them. If you kneel down at the very bottom, just above the cooling system, there should be a row of wires leading out of the mainframe."

"I can see them."

"Good. If you follow them, on the left hand side there should be a gap between them about two-thirds of the way along with some lights in it."

"Okay... found that."

"That's great, Youji-kun. In the gap there should be two small hatches with the numbers 1394 written on them. One of them should have a green light on above it. Open the other one."

Youji very carefully reached out and flipped the hatch open. To his relief, nothing happened. Shining his torch inside, all he saw was an interface plug at the back, an almost square hole with something sticking out of the middle, which he described to Omi.

"Excellent, Youji-kun, excellent. All you have to do is take the blue cable and plug one end into the backup drive and then other end into that interface. When you do that, the LED on the backup should come on, and so should the green light above the interface hatch."

It took him a moment but Youji managed to get the wires in place, then followed Omi's instructions to fit the backup module into the compartment, close the hatch and finally close the whole back of the mainframe.

"You done?" Ken asked.

"I hope so," Youji replied. "How about you?"

"Just erasing my footprints in the system," Ken said.

"That's great to hear," Omi said. "You two should go back to bed just in case. Say hello to Aya-kun from me when you see him."

The phone buzzed and he was gone. Youji handed it back to Ken, who finished his work with the computer then disassembled it, replaced everything in his harness and pulled his coat back on. Youji turned off his torch and they both walked as quietly as they could through the silent crew quarters, on edge for the faintest sounds. But there was nothing to hear except the low rumble of the ship's engines idling and, somewhere in the distance, the splash of the waves.

Neither of them dared speak until they were up the first flight of stairs and to the door to the deck with the stewards' quarters on it.

"You don't have a roommate who'll get suspicious do you?" Youji asked.

Ken shook his head. "Some lucky stewards get small rooms to themselves. Omi made sure I was lucky."

"One more thing," Youji muttered. "If we've just left that backup drive in the mainframe to copy the files, doesn't that mean that for Omi to see them we're going to have to go back and get it?"

"Oh yeah." Ken nodded. "Sorry. I forgot about that."

Youji sighed. "Ken, is there anything else you've forgotten to tell me?"

"Not that I can think of, Youji," Ken said.

_To be continued..._


	6. Four Views

Chapter Six: Four Views

Two days later, Youji stood on the foredeck of the _Divine Wind_ with half the passengers as the cruise ship edged into Sendai-Shiogama Port. The port was plain concrete and stone, but to the sides he could see high white cliffs with trees leaning over them towards the water. He watched the passengers as much as the view, and out of the corner of his eye caught sight of Ota without his coat and his black tie loosened, standing by the railing away from the main crowd.

In the distance, coming slowly closer, was the large three-tiered slip where they would dock. It was already quite crowded with workers standing by to restock all the ship's needs. They would spend the rest of the day loading up the ship and the passengers from Sendai would come aboard tomorrow before the ship set sail again. In the meanwhile, her passengers were free to enjoy Shiogama, Sendai and Matsushima Bay.

He left the others to it, slipped into the artificial cool of the entertainment deck and made his way to the arcade. It was all reds and yellows, brash colour and loud noises that was still very popular with the younger passengers, especially since all the machines were free. Crewmembers were allowed in there on their off hours, and the many of them took advantage of it. There were games for everyone there: beat-'em-ups, driving games and shooters, from the classics of _Tetris _and _Pong_ to _Daytona USA_ and _Virtua Fighter 3_. Youji resisted the urge to revisit the twin dreams of his teenage years on _Out Run_ and strolled towards the only shooting game cabinet he could see with a crowd around it.

Ken was standing in front of the cabinet, out of uniform in trainers, dark tracksuit bottoms, a green t-shirt and his blue baseball cap with the brim facing backwards. He had the Namco light-gun held out in front of him in the textbook Weaver Pistol Stance: both hands on the gun, body tilted a little to the side, arms and knees slightly bent, feet a shoulder-width apart with one of them slightly forward on the cabinet's pedal. He was firing one gentle click of the fake trigger at a time, and it was that accuracy and speed that was drawing the crowd. It occurred to Youji that when he started he would have been aiming slightly too low.

Despite his attention to the game, Ken caught a glimpse of Youji out of the corner of his eye. Youji strolled over to the nearby _House of the Dead_ cabinet and spent five minutes trying to kill the oncoming zombie hoard by aiming for the chest and pulling the trigger frantically until they fell down. He was down to one life before he felt Ken at his shoulder.

"Helps if you aim for the head like in the movies."

"I don't have your aim," Youji commented.

"Why'd you come down here, Youji?" Ken glanced at his shoulder.

"You said Ota never leaves Matsumoto's side," Youji replied, taking his attention off the screen for just long enough for one of the zombie slugs to finish him off. "He's up on deck now by himself looking at the dock with everyone else. Can you think why?"

"No idea," Ken said. "Maybe he wants to hire a boat?"

Youji shoved the light-gun back into its holster. "A boat?"

"Do you listen to anything we tell you on this boat, Youji?" Ken hissed. "This afternoon they'll be hiring out motorboats so the passengers can go for a private tour of Matsushima Bay. Maybe that's where he's going. And if you ask me why I swear I'll find a way to shoot you with this light-gun."

"Thanks, Ken," Youji said. "I'll find out somehow. Your fans are waiting for you."

He turned and walked away without another word, but caught someone asking, "Who's that, Rei?"

"Just one of the passengers," Ken replied calmly. "Said he was pretty good at this when he was my age. I think he was lying."

That got a laugh from the group, which parted as Ken made his way back to the games cabinet just in time to hear it announce, "There's been a kidnapping! It's Rachel, daughter of the president of Sercia!"

* * *

Youji had concocted a plan by the time he reached his cabin. Rolled up in one of his spare pairs of shoes was the wad of money he had won from Hirofumi Takatori. He counted out a hundred thousand yen and tucked that into his pocket, then checked his reflection in the mirror before heading out into the sunshine again.

The deck was still crowded with people, but only a few of them loitered near the bar. The staff were enjoying the view as much as everyone else. One of them stepped back into the shade and took off his sunglasses as Youji approached.

"Good morning."

"Good morning." Youji returned the favour and pushed his own sunglasses up. "I'd like to order a picnic lunch. Is that possible?"

"Certainly, sir." The waiter produced a pad. "What would you like?"

"Let's see..." Youji leant thoughtfully against the bar. "A selection of sushi with wasabi dip – you can choose it – cold soba noodles, four anpan buns, tuna sashimi and eight dumplings."

The waiter repeated that back, then asked, "And to drink?"

"Two bottles of cider, four bottles of mineral water and..." Youji smiled and thought of the roll of money in his pocket, "a bottle of pink champagne, with two flutes. All of it on ice, of course."

"Of course, sir."

"Oh, and two chocolate taiyaki cakes. That's everything. When can I pick it all up?"

The waiter looked thoughtfully at the list. "An hour?"

Youji grinned as he counted out ten thousand yen from his roll. "I'll see you in an hour."

As he walked away from the bar he realised that at some point during the conversation the _Divine Wind_'s engines had stopped. Youji realised that for the first time since he had boarded, the ship was quiet. There was little wind and the deck under his feet was still as the vibrations of the engines faded away to nothing. The feeling was almost eerie.

Now that they had stopped, the crowd at the bow had thinned. There were still some people looking out over the port but, in comparison to the approach, the clutter of quays and docks was unimpressive.

Ota had vanished, but as Youji reached the nose of the ship he saw Karin standing beside the rail looking out past the built-up Seiyu headland towards the distant entrance to Matsushima Bay. As he approached, she turned and smiled at him.

"Hi, Youji. It's a lovely view."

"I hear there's four of them."

Karin counted on her long, slender fingers. "The Magnificent View, the Beautiful View, the Enchanting View and the Grand View. I've been to Sendai several times but I haven't seen any of them."

Youji leaned closer to her. "Then today is your lucky day."

She tilted her head back. "Is it?"

"It is. Come with me to the bay today."

"How are we going to get there?"

"You let me worry about that. I know you're going to say yes, so say it."

She looked up at him over her sunglasses. "You're very sure of yourself today."

"I am. Because a woman like you can always say no to me, but she can't say no to Matsushima Bay in the sunshine."

"You win, Youji Kudou. Yes."

"Then meet me on the dock in an hour."

"I can't wait."

Youji left her by the rail. It was his turn to play hard to get. He walked slowly through the ship, passing several other passengers carrying bags on their way to disembark for the day. There was a small group of stewards standing in the enormous lobby, addressing the passengers on their way out. Youji paused to listen to their recommendations of activities during the two days that the ship was docked. It took him less than a minute to decide that the one doing most of the talking was not only a Sendai native, but seemed to know everything there was to know about the entire prefecture. If Youji had been planning to head inland he would have stayed for longer, but he already knew everything he needed to know about the area so he kept going past them and out onto the dock.

After days of salty sea air, the taste of exhaust fumes in the wind was at the same time unpleasant and comfortingly familiar. Most of the familiarity came from the rank of idling taxis a few dozen metres away at the point where the harbour widened out. Youji smiled. Matsumoto thought of everything.

In the other direction, the docks narrowed even further and a small school of motorboats were lined up, varying in size from wooden ones that would look at home in a European canal to much larger ones that could almost have made the trip between the country's islands.

Ota was standing on the dock, missing his tie and with his shirt sleeves rolled up. He was talking to a gangly man whose face and arms were covered in sunscreen. They were both standing at the stern of a medium-sized white, plastic-hulled boat named _Gull_. As Youji approached, Ota handed over some money and climbed aboard.

"Ota-san?" Youji called.

Ota looked down at him from the stern. "Yes?"

"My name is Youji Kudou. I work for Minato Shipping. Are you hiring this boat for Matsumoto-san?"

"Why do you ask, Kudou-san?"

Youji grinned. "I'm very eager to meet Matsumoto-san and express my gratitude on behalf of myself and my company for his patronage."

Ota smiled carefully. "Then I'm afraid you'll be disappointed, Kudou-san. Matsumoto-san always stays aboard the _Divine Wind_. I'm taking this boat for a drive alone."

"I can see why," Youji told him. "It's a lovely boat. Perhaps I'll rent one as well."

"I'm afraid I don't think you could afford it, Kudou-san."

Youji strolled up the short steps onto the stern in front of Ota. He looked around the boat's entirely white hull, at the engine controls, the navigational equipment and the closed door in front of the wheel that led to the small compartment in the nose.

He sighed. "Maybe you're right, Ota-san. It is a beautiful boat. Perhaps I'd do better with that one."

He pointed a few boats along to a small runabout. Ota looked as well, and as he did, Youji slipped a tracking device under one of the seat cushions.

"I apologise for intruding, Ota-san. Enjoy your trip."

"You too, Kudou-san."

Youji clambered out of the boat and turned away from it. The sunburned man bowed to him.

"Ryou Isobe, Kudou-san. Would you like to hire a boat?"

"Yes. As I said to Ota-san, perhaps a small wooden one. I appreciate the classics."

He and Isobe walked over to one of the little boats. It had a long, smooth shape of the sort that had graced lakes and canals all over the world for nearly a century. The frame was made of strips of brown wood that had been polished until they shone. The same was true of the metal on the instruments and the green leather seats, which could have been transplanted from a European drawing room. The controls were simple enough for Youji – who had no real experience with boats – to understand: a small steering wheel with a single throttle lever next to it and a dashboard with a speedometer and a compass. On the port side, in English, was written _Sea Breeze_.

Isobe waited for Youji to finish admiring it. "This is an American Hacker boat. Have you heard of them? Shame. She can carry eight in great comfort and style, has an inboard motor and can run at twenty-five knots all day."

"How much for the day?"

"Given the style and the value of the boat, I'll have to ask for fifty thousand yen."

Youji shook his head. "No you won't. For that you could buy a new one. Thirty-five thousand."

Isobe looked at Youji and then back at the boat. "A man working in shipping should appreciate the price of fuel in this climate. Forty thousand, please."

"Forty it is."

Careful not to show how much money he had on him, Youji counted out the cash to Isobe. Then he signed a receipt saying that he would wear a life vest at all times – something he had no intention of doing – and that anything that happened on his trip was his responsibility.

"Thank you very much, Isobe-san," Youji said, handing back the pen. "I'll be back in twenty minutes. I have a few things I need to collect first. I think you have another customer."

Youji ran his hand across the boat and then walked back to the _Divine Wind_. On his way, he passed Hirofumi Takatori, striding towards the line of boats with Luisa and Miyuki by his side, wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses and grinning.

* * *

Youji had just enough time to hide the picnic supplies in the runabout's storage compartment out of the sun when Karin appeared on the dock. She had changed: she was dressed all in white that shone in the morning sun, open-toed sandals, short linen shorts and a blouse that was hardly buttoned at all and tied in a bow above her navel. She strolled along the dock towards him, her sunglasses down over her eyes, ignoring her hair flapping into her face.

"What do you think?" Youji asked.

"It's beautiful," she replied. "But I have to say, it's not what I was expecting."

"And what's that?"

She pushed her glasses up. "From you? I don't know. Nothing this normal. Something with a sail, or oars, or maybe even peddles."

"Then I'm sorry to disappoint. I'll do better next time."

He reached up. She took his hand, held it and skipped into the runabout and smiled. "Show me what this classic can do, Youji."

"I'll be glad to."

Youji threw the last line back onto the dock and gently pushed the throttle. It resisted only for an instant, then the boat swayed and a gentle burbling noise came from the stern. The nose lifted just a little, but enough to throw Karin off balance and against Youji. He turned the wheel, aimed the nose towards the exit of the small harbour and eased the throttle forward. The steady rumble of the engine propelled them forward, dipping and swaying, out of the wash from the other small boats and past the _Divine Wind_. They both looked up as it went past; from the level of the water the liner seemed enormous, like a tower block that was somehow able to float.

Travelling at one-third power, getting a feel for the controls, Youji left the cruise ship behind. As he passed beyond the shelter of the harbour pontoon the little boat pitched even more. He glanced nervously to his side and was relieved to see no trace of sea-sickness on Karin's face. Her skin glowed gold in the sun and her eyes were shining.

"Hang on to something, Karin," he said.

He turned the wheel and the runabout arced gracefully around, nose now pointed towards the distant peak of Mount Okatamori as he pushed the throttle all the way forward. The inboard motor roared, the bow rose and a sparkling white wave expanded outwards from their wake as the runabout accelerated. The indicated speed only went up to twenty-four knots, but hanging onto the wheel as Karin hung on to him, Youji felt like they were moving a hundred times faster. The wind boomed in his ears, the deck beneath him rose and fell as the boat sprang into the air, leaping up as waves struck the bow and then diving back down again in a wonderful rhythm. Youji had driven the Seven at nearly full speed on roads that barely deserved the name, but not even that had been this exhilarating.

Then the boat passed the end of the peninsula and as Youji turned to port, Matsushima Bay opened up before them. More than two hundred islands, from the ones nearly a kilometre long to those that were barely more than large rocks, sat in the clear, blue water of the bay, every one of them crowned with a cluster of proud green pine trees.

Youji aimed the runabout into the gap between the larger islands and the Shichigahama Peninsula and pulled back the throttle, slowing the boat to fifteen knots. He took his eyes of the view for just long enough to pull a map of the bay from a compartment next to him and attach it beneath the compass.

"Are you worried about getting lost?" Karin asked.

Youji smiled. "I don't want to lose my deposit. Hold the wheel, there's something else I want to get."

"Okay..."

Karin cautiously held the wheel with both hands and kept her eyes fixed on the empty water ahead. Youji scrambled behind her for the bag he had brought with him. In one of the side pockets was a small Magellan GPS locator with a simple black and white screen. All the factory model could do was give the direction and range to pre-saved destinations, but Omi had modified it to act as the receiver for several of his tracking devices. Youji turned it on, waited, and smiled when a dot representing Ota's boat appeared on the screen, two and a half kilometres away: in the middle of the bay.

He scrambled back past Karin and mounted the device on the dashboard next to the map.

"What's that?" Karin asked.

"GPS," Youji told her. "We got given half a dozen by a client. My boss wanted me to test it out to see if they're any good."

"Okay," she replied. "What's that dot for?"

Youji looked down at the tracker and shrugged. "I've got no idea. I left the instructions back on the ship!"

Karin laughed and her eyes looked past him, sweeping all the way across the bay from Shiogama to Matsushima itself. "Where do we go first?"

Youji pointed to his right towards the medium-sized cluster of islands near Miyato. "There. That looks like a good place for lunch."

The boat danced smoothly across the calmer waters of the bay towards the distant pine trees. On the way, Youji let Karin take the wheel again, and while she did, pulled a pair of binoculars out of his bag and pointed them in the direction indicated by the GPS. He saw a flash of white in the sunshine and, with the help of the binoculars, picked out Ota's boat. A few glances on the journey were enough to tell him that it was circling one spot opposite Tona, waiting for something.

"What are you looking at?" Karin asked.

"I was just wondering whether Ota-san was going anywhere interesting. He's been here before, I thought he might know something we didn't."

"I don't care what he knows, Youji," Karin said. "You promised me lunch. All this sea air is making me hungry."

"I've got a friend who thinks just like that." Youji grinned.

His island of choice was getting close now, and as Youji eased back the throttle and guided the boat behind it he realised it was actually two islands, almost connected by a slim tendril of rock reaching across a miniature bay between them. He slid the _Sea Breeze_ around the first island and into this gap and let it drift to a stop.

"Wow," Karin whispered. "We could be all alone in the world."

Youji dropped the boat's little anchor and then unpacked the supplies. Karin laughed with delight as he popped the cork on the pink Champagne and poured her a glass to go with her sashimi and dumplings. The Champagne was pleasantly sweet with just a hint of strawberry and raspberry, but in the heat the simple mineral water was delicious as well. In spite of the temperature, they both enjoyed the mix of the chocolate buns and the harsher bite of the cider.

"That was delicious, Youji," Karin told him; despite her claims, she had only eaten a little. "I think we should go swimming while we can."

"You shouldn't swim after you eat," Youji replied.

Karin smiled. "Well, if I get in trouble I know you'll be there to save me."

She untied her blouse and pulled it off her shoulders, revealing the thin straps of a white bikini top, white against her honey-coloured skin. She turned on the spot, giving him plenty of time to admire her, then dropped off the side of the boat into the water. Youji turned to look back at the GPS, but the position of Ota's boat had not changed. He unbuttoned his shirt and dropped it into the bottom of the boat, but made sure a small ladder was secured to the side of the boat before jumping in as well.

The water was warmer than he was expected. He kept his head above the surface and saw Karin treading water a few metres away. She turned and swam away, her kicking feet splashing him. He kept up with her easily as she let him chase her around the boat a few times. Then she finally stopped and treaded water again as he swam towards her. She reached out and wrapped her arms around his neck.

Their limbs entangled and their combined weight dragged them both under. She let go and they surfaced, splashing clumsily, trying to keep the salty water out of their mouths.

"Okay," she exclaimed, "enough swimming."

"This was your idea."

She kicked back towards the boat. "Maybe I just wanted to see you with your shirt off."

She splashed him the face several times getting up the ladder and it took him a few minutes to follow. She waited for him and apologetically held out a bottle of water that they used to wash the salty taste out of their mouths. Then they laid out their towels on the seats and nestled up against each other, shivering comfortably in the warm air and the sunshine, Karin's head on Youji's chest as they shared bites of sushi.

Youji forced himself to keep some of his attention away from Karin's cool, damp skin and his eyes on the GPS. When, eventually, the dot started to move, he shifted uncomfortably and started to move.

"Do we have to go?" Karin asked.

"Well, you don't want to spend the whole day here do you?" Youji replied. "There's plenty more bay to see."

They towelled off a bit more and put their shirts back on. Karin leant against Youji as he pushed the throttle, guided them out into more open water and once again gunned the engine to send them across the wide expanse of the bay. They were headed towards the crescent of green across the built-up coast that marked Matsushima National Park, but Youji kept his eyes on the cluster of islands in front of it, looking for the familiar flash of white on the water.

"Hey, isn't that Ota-san's boat again?" Karin asked, pointing.

Youji looked to his right. "Oh yes, it is."

Before he could reach them, Karin had grabbed the binoculars. "Hey, there's another boat there. I wonder what they're doing."

"Are you sure?" Youji asked.

Karin scowled. "I've still got a story to write, Youji. I can't just go back to my editor and tell him I was too busy being swept off my feet to write. It's a weird place to meet and I'd like a closer look, if we can do it without him seeing us."

There was a dim thrumming noise in the distance. Youji looked over his shoulder and smiled.

"I think there's a way."

Youji turned the wheel to port and revved the engine up to about a third, putting him on a course parallel to the island where Ota was meeting the other boat. The roaring in the air was louder as he swung the runabout around again and sent them towards the island at full speed. The sound of the _Sea Breeze_'s own small engine was obliterated along with their wake when a powerboat driven by Hirofumi Takatori shot past at thirty knots. Youji was able to keep up for just long enough for Hirofumi to disengage from the two girls and give him a friendly wave before the powerboat vanished into the distance. In the meantime, Youji cut the engine and allowed them to drift around the island on low power.

"That was good," Karin whispered. "How do you know Hirofumi Takatori?"

Youji shrugged. "Takatori? I thought that was Don Johnson."

She was about to hit his arm, but stopped because Ota's boat had drifted into view from behind an outcrop and Youji cut the engine. Ota himself was not aboard, so Youji let the runabout slide a little further forward until he could see the larger boat. It was large enough to be called a small yacht, twice as long as Ota's boat with a flying bridge on top of the main cabin, and behind that a flat area sheltered from the sun by an awning. A simple table had been unfolded there and three men were sitting around it. One of them was Ota, but Youji did not recognise the other two. Their attention was focussed on some papers on the table that were flapping gently in the breeze; none of them looked up.

"Weird place for a business meeting," Karin whispered.

From then on neither of them spoke. They lay down over the bow of the boat, taking turns with the binoculars to watch. While Karin was using them Youji kept his eyes on the rest of the boat, particularly the bridge, and the sea around them. He listened carefully, but the voices from the meeting were just a distant burble and there was no other sound but the whistle of the wind.

Finally, after twenty minutes, the meeting ended. The younger of the two other men gathered up some of the papers and took them into the cabin. Ota carefully slid the rest into an attaché case. He then stood, bowed, and, case in hand, performed a brave jump across half a metre of empty sea to land back on his own boat. The _Gull_'s engine grumbled into life and it accelerated away. As it did so, the younger man came out of the cabin wearing a baseball cap and climbed up to the bridge. Youji and Karin both slid back, keeping themselves as low as possible. For a moment it seemed like the yacht would head straight towards them but then it turned again, headed towards the entrance of the bay.

Youji waited until the engine noise was lost in the distance before he turned to Karin. "Did you see the name?"

Karin dropped her head. "Oh no, I didn't think of that. Did you?"

"No."

"I wonder what they were talking about."

Youji shrugged as he turned the runabout's engine back on. "It could have been anything. Maybe Ota-san was doing some quick business for Matsumoto-san. Or maybe he was doing something for himself. That might have been his broker for all we know."

"You don't meet your broker on a boat in the middle of a deserted bay, Youji."

Youji aimed the boat away from the islands and then turned around. "These are powerful men, Karin. I don't think you should tell anyone about this unless you've got some proof of what they're doing. It could be risky for your career."

Karin smiled. "That's sweet, Youji. Don't worry, I know what I'm doing. Now, it's nearly two already and we've hardly seen any of the bay. Where are we going next?"

"Tamonsan."

Tomorrow, Youji would report all this to Omi. Tomorrow, Yamada would board the _Divine Wind_, and bring Aya with him. Tomorrow, the three members of Weiss would have to begin planning how to eliminate three targets while keeping a fourth alive.

Youji smiled. That was tomorrow. Today he wrapped his arm around Karin's waist as if he had nothing to think about but himself, her, and the wide blue waters of Matsushima Bay.

_To be continued…_


End file.
